Why is there no airdrop for iPad 3??

If Apple adds the feature or at least make it clear why they can't, then everyone (or most people) will be happy.

Your point is well made that it would be nice if Apple listened to customers sufficiently engaged to comment! This particular thing is NOT the end of the world, but there are circumstances where one cannot, or wishes not to, access wifi and that there is no phone signal, or one wishes not to send whatever item by that route.

There has been comment in these forums going back to at least 2009 criticising Apple, with varying degrees of vehemence, for not fully and properly implementing Bluetooth to enable simple and effective file transfer. That,to me, seems to be a pretty persistent customer request for something that is a standard, commonly defined, capability for mobile and other devices. Not least because it isolates Apple users from a capability the dominant phone operating system (and PCs etc) can all use.

That criticism is not unreasonable since all devices going back at least that far contain the technical capability (hw/sw) to do this. Indeed, a number of third party apps have used it, but it would have been even easier for them, and everyone else, if bluetooth transfer had, for example, been made accessible more easily, perhaps via "open in".

Some years back, Apple even removed from the app store, within days of it appearing, a very handy on/off app for Bluetooth, only to put that very capability into iOS7 as an "innovation".

What is it that Apple have against Bluetooth? As another poster commented, it would be nice to get a response to these comments, but one cannot help but end up suspecting that this approach is to do with maintaining Apple's "walled garden" rather than listening to customers.

Today, if you ask an iPhone 4/4s to look for other bluetooth devices, whereas it used to find other iphones, it no longer will under iOS7.

And yet if you run one of the third party apps using Bluetooth (eg Phototransfer) on an iPhone 4 with iOS7 it WILL detect another iPhone and it will "pair", create a profile and transfer data - even if wifi is off.

This implies that iOS7 is deliberately built to mask this capability, except when it is used by Airdrop - and also implies that Airdrop could actually work on older models. After all, Phototransfer can use both wifi and bluetooth for file transfers.

It is disappointing that Apple chooses to do this and, although this is not a big deal it is one of those niggles that points at attitude and inclines me, at least, to consider alternatives next time I change devices.

HINT - a nice response would be for Apple not only to enable Airdrop in older devices, but also, in an act of unusual openness, use all their outstanding design and technical skills to make it so that it can work with non-apple devices too!

My school uses iPads everyday and I realised that the 4th generation has airdrop and the 3rd generation doesn't and this is what everyone is talking about I am currently updating my 4th generation to IOS 7.0.3 will this give the 3rd generation airdrop?

Disappointingly, no. Just read the list of what it does do,installed it just to be sure and confirmed that it does not.

This is another reason to sell all my Apple devices asap as i'm really done with their "strategy" of modern customer slavery !

Huge prices for average devices, buggy features & with every new model customers are more or less forced to buy it implicitly cause previous devices don't support all new features !

Any Android & even Microsoft tablet is much more appreciated.

@Apple ... understand CUSTOMER needs & work on it NOW .. finally !

Thanks, Ralf

Your older ipad is the same, it's just as good as the day you got it.

You don't have to buy a new ipad, wait a few years and then buy an even newer and better one

Or you could sell your ipad, any ipad gets very high prices, an ipad 1 sells for $250-$300. Try that with a five year old android anything....lol

Then you can buy a new ipad for this feature that you must have, even though you can get this functionality with apps or other methods.

I don't understand the discussion here. We are asking for function and to some extend don't care on the implementation or speed. As long as there are apps showing Airdrop like data exchange between iOS devices other than the currently Airdrop enabled there is a chance to solve the problem under the hood so it appears Airdrop to be available to any currently sold model.

Possibly data exchange might be of different speed with regards to chip capabilities of the individual device. I had never understood why an iPad does not recognize an iPhone via bluetooth on iOS level. It requires apps like iExplorer to have your problems solved. It is fairly easy to do the sender receiver handshake with bluetooth and pull the actual content one way through WiFi in the background. Again, function over technique.

Never mind, Apple sure is great in backward compatibility. But Airdrop is incomplete here.

That is exactly right. The transfer speed for the Airdrop feature is not particularly relevant. One second to transfer the picture is better than 5, but in any case, either would be better than no feature by a long shot. If you don't like the slower speed as imposed by true hardware limitations, then you are welcome to purchase new hardware. The fact remains that Apple can implement Airdrop in almost any model from a hardware standpoint within some speed limit as imposed by the hardware. As Apple has chosen not to, it means that Apple is not listening to its customers in this case, and I think the customers are rightfully not happy. When you strip away the pleasantries, this attitude isn’t just an aggressive stance toward improving the user experience using every bit of hardware power, as the Apple fans might believe in their defense, it is basically naked greed (sorry but I'm having trouble thinking of any other reason), and customer dissatisfaction with Apple’s greed is the reason this thread exists.

There is no reason for this lack. iPad 3 users were treated really bad in the name of progress(?). We have seen these kind of things with the Siri launch. Old devices didn't have this simple feature because they want you to buy a new iThing. And if we dig into the hole we could find other strange things.

Let's take a look at the problem: with good software you can do almost anything,they had to deal with a small number of devices so the Bluetooth/Wifi interfaces were well known, iPad 2 and 3 have actually good hardware and the first one is still selling,even the worst of the android phones has file transmission..in my opinion they are simply trying to force you into a new expensive purchase.

Will I buy another apple device? Maybe..I love my iPod touch 5g and love the ecosystem.

Will they convince me they are right doing such things? No chances. There's always a solution and users shouldn't talk about Bluetooth/wifi technologies or other technical issues. Users should be angry at them for this lack of caring.

About fanboys,we are not talking about your family, don't feel attacked. Those choices are bad for all, deal with it.

Since Apple hasn't really supplied technical details of how Airdrop works, people are having to reverse engineer it and determine the requirements as part of the process.

3rd gen ipad does indeed do ad-hoc wifi. If it didn't, tethering wouldn't work for Personal Hotspot (devices join ipad) or for the Eye-FI 'Direct Mode' (iPad joins eye-FI card) between camera and ipad. So trying to make it as simple as '3rd gen ipad doesn't support ad-hoc' isn't the full answer. There may be some additional technical details they're leaving out but, then, that's kinda the problem: Apple should give a better explanation about the 'why' somewhere, even if buried deep in a tech note or Less-FAQ somewhere. But that's not the kind of thing Apple is generally known to do.

If 'only current devices' support AirDrop and yet a terminal 'hack' can enable it for older or even non-Apple Hackintoshs, the same might be true of iPhones and iPads and this is just another differentiator to encourage people to buy new hardware. But, again, without the tech details how are we to know?

The 3rd generation can partially do ad hoc but it cannot do dual transfer/band. You can use the feature in iPhoto and some apps to use the Bluetooth PAN profile to transfer files.

I agree with Gail from Maine.

To the whiners: Please, please, just stop the whining and move on. Imagine this: try one of the FREE apps from the app store that allow you to share photos and videos over bluetooth and wi-fi. How about just being a little resourceful and self sufficient as opposed to a complainer.

The reason why those FREE apps are worthless is because you need an internet connection to make them work or you'll need an internet connection to download the app, which one of the two parties will not likely have on their phone. I happen to go to Burning Man each year. There are a lot of folks there who might like to swap pictures and there isn't an internet in the middle of the desert. In fact there isn't a good internet connection a lot of places, and also, I am sick of apps or parts of smart phones that assume otherwise. A smart phone is supposed to be "smart" and that seems to me to include being able to talk to other phones of at least the same manufacturer. We aren't talking rocket science here. It's pathetic it has taken Apple so long to get AirDrop in the first place, and then they fumble it on the older models to turn a quick buck. That's the way I see it. If not they'd mention the reasons they couldn't do it, which would be equally pathetic but at least honest.

iPhoto and several other apps can transfer to older devices without a WiFi hotspot.

We need to remember that the reason for continuing to develop improved hardware is to provide increased functionality. When Apple does so they are accused of cheating owners of previous generations, if they did not they would be accused of not staying current.

If Apple did not provide increased functionality over and above their previous generations when they released a new model it would be hard to understand what the purpose of developing new hardware improvements would be.

Imagine if Windows users were restricted to the same level of functionality that older PCs provided, or if Mac users where restricted to the functionality of the Lisa.

It would make no sense.

The problem is that Americans have lost faith in corporate America in general after being constantly ripped off, optimized and squeezed.

Apple is one of the companies that maintains a higher level of integrity within a very competitive marketplace. No I don't work for Apple.